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I fall to my knees. Shattered glass, melted candles and the outline of scorched feathers are all that surround me. Every single person who was in my house – my entire family — is gone.

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can’t trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange markings on his skin.

The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland…

Beautiful Creatures meets Daughter of Smoke and Bone with an infusion of Latin American tradition in this highly original fantasy adventure.

I’ll start at the end… GIVE ME THE NEXT BOOK. Don’t tease me with your vampires!

Ok, so backing up, wow! What an incredible and new urbanish fantasy that celebrates diversity! Labyrinth Lost drew me in with its creepy talk of death, enchanted me with its Alice-in-Wonderland-style other world, tore my heart to shreds with a plot twist and then shocked it back to life at the end.

One of my favourite things about this book was that Alex was The Chosen One and she DID NOT WANT IT. I mean, what kind of person doesn’t want to be a BAMF bruja? Well, Alex didn’t, as she believed to her core that magic was the root of her family’s suffering. She didn’t want it so much that she went to rather idiotic and extreme lengths to get rid of it, not realising what she was asking for. While I thought more along the lines of Rishi, Alex was so convinced that her magic was bad that I couldn’t really fault her. Watching her come into her power and herself was so much more incredible because of her prior conviction.

“I’m sure you’ll look beautiful surrounded by your dead.”

Nova, oh Nova. SuperNova. What a heartbreaker. Was it so predictable of me to fall in love with him? And he was so broken! Also, um, hi, tattoos and cocky smiles just do that to me, ok? His tiffs with Rishi were fun to read, especially when they tried to get in each other’s way. Rishi was great, though I wish we got more of a sense of her before Alex fell into the rabbit hole. (Ok, not a rabbit hole, but it may as well have been given where she ended up.) Rishi was sure of herself and of Alex, and I was actually a little jealous of Alex.

The romance in this book took an unexpected turn that wasn’t clear-cut. The fact that there was some uncertainty and also different kinds of feelings for different people made it more real.

However, the romance definitely took a back seat, as the focus was more on family and ancestry. WHICH WAS AWESOME. It was so cool to see the diversity of characters, and also that Alex wasn’t from just one culture. She wasn’t just Latina; she had links to Spain and Africa, really enriching her family’s ways. The relationship that Alex had with her sisters especially stole my heart, the way they fought but still so clearly loved each other. It was only by opening up to that love from not just her sisters, but also the rest of her family, and truly appreciating it that Alex could do what needed to be done. It just took a lot for Alex to realise that…

I loved how Cordova took elements of different cultures and wove them together to create her own version of brujarie and the Deos. I have a serious weakness for polytheistic belief systems, and this one was no exception. I also liked the types of magic and how they manifested, as well as how using magic had a recoil effect on the user. The blend of Brooklyn with magic and Los Lagos was amazing and made me want to go to Brooklyn and find myself some bruja friends, then open a portal to party with the fae. But with nicer food than the fae…

It’s hard for me to explain why this wasn’t a five-star read. If you look at my rating system, 5 stars are reserved for books that I am drawn to read again, which is rare. They have to completely take over me, and while I thoroughly enjoyed Labyrinth Lost, I wasn’t lost to it. It was a thrill-ride, but I always felt like I was watching it happen from the other side of the page rather than right there in the story. While I could find ways to relate to Alex and the other characters, I couldn’t fully connect. Like I said earlier, I also feel like I didn’t get enough Rishi in the beginning, which meant I couldn’t fully feel her role in the story.

That being said, I am so ready for the next in the series! My wishlist includes more about Alex’s dad, more Nova (as much as I shouldn’t love him, I do), more badass magic and more vampires and shapeshifter. Please, please, please can Rose have a first crush??? But yeah, READ THIS BOOK.

PS – Isn’t the cover so cool?! I can’t wait to see the cover of the next one!

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